


On the Wrong Side of the Ghostfence

by QueenoftheDarned



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Gen, Lore-Friendly, Memoir, Morrowind, Original Character(s), Vvardenfell, expeditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 02:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19367923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenoftheDarned/pseuds/QueenoftheDarned
Summary: Edgar Louis' dream was to walk the entire perimeter of the Ghostfence around Vvardenfell's perilous Red Mountain, and write a book about it. This is that book.





	1. Chapter 1

**On the Wrong Side of the Ghostfence**

by Edgar Louis

* * *

_Introduction_

Since I was a young boy I dreamed of becoming an adventurer, to explore far-off lands and the many caves and ancient ruins scattered across them. 

Life, in typical fashion, led me down a completely different path. I discovered my gift for study at a young age, and I became a scholar instead. Admittedly I was far better suited to this vocation, the scrawny, tentative Breton man I grew up to be.

Later on, as the head archivist at the Arcane University, reading the books and scrolls waiting to be sorted into the library was a large part of my job. Through written word I re-lived the adventures of adventurers and scholars alike, and my dreams of running off to travel the world were rekindled.

For a long time I wrestled with my instincts. Silly daydreams, I told myself, were pointless. I was a successful scholar, and had a job to attend to. The mages guild library wasn't going to organize itself, and people depended on me. 

It was not until some years later I realised I was deluding myself – I never married, I lived alone within the Arcane University. I had no family to provide for. I was a middle-aged, balding scholar who spent his days endlessly arranging and rearranging musty old tomes for musty old wizards. More importantly, I was long overdue for a holiday.

I began to plan a trip to Vvardenfell, deciding that the island was the most rugged and exotic place in Tamriel I could possibly visit. I had read all about Red Mountain and the Ghostfence, the magical barrier surrounding the volcano, during my studies, but had never seen it for myself. It was time to do something about that.

* * *

_Chapter One – Raziel the Dunmer_

My first glimpse of Vvardenfell from the ferry was a dark shape looming out of the thick early-morning fog that blurred the edges of the sky and the water. As our ship drew closer, the shapes solidified and the mist cleared to reveal the Imperial settlement of Ebonheart, a reminder of home that looked lost and out of place amongst the groves of giant mushrooms that grew on the shore. 

However, beyond the stern grey stone the Imperials had built Ebonheart with, the land looked as rugged as the dark elves that lived there. For the first time in my life, I felt the thrill of being in a strange land! 

Beside me, Raziel Lendas, my guide, seemed far less enthused by her return to the island. For the day-long voyage she shut herself away in her cabin, only emerging when the distant screech of cliff racers signalled our approach to land.

Naturally I had hired her for protection on my journey – I was not particularly unfit for my age, but I had never shown much aptitude for combat or magic, and I knew the wilds of Morrowind were far less tame than my homeland of Cyrodiil. I found the hunter slouched over a table by herself in the corner of a seedy tavern, nursing a flagon of Mazte and brooding over her latest fruitless excursion to the island. It had not taken long to convince her to join me, though her conditions were very specific.

“I want three thousand Septims, five hundred in advance, and you pay for our supplies and equipment,” she told me, rubbing her pointed chin with a gauntleted hand. 

I realise most men would have balked at the price, but something in her expression changed when she glanced me over. I decided to think of the expenses as an investment into my future.

As she pocketed my deposit, Raziel suddenly flashed her pointed teeth in a smile.

“It’s not often you’ll find someone like you who’s willing to go near the dust-bowl of Morrowind,” she said bluntly, putting more emphasis on ‘like you’ than I really thought was necessary. Still, her confidence bolstered my own, and here we were, nearly at our destination.

Raziel’s mood improved drastically once we landed at the Ebonheart docks, and her Alit-like smile returned when she saw I was already wearing the special thick-soled boots she had told me to buy, to protect my feet from the rocky terrain. She had fashioned for herself a quiver of arrows during the voyage, and her longbow gleamed with the enchantment she had placed on it. She looked all-too eager to wage war on Red Mountain’s fearsome menagerie of beasties. 

* * *

_Chapter Two – Vvardenfell_

A short boat-trip on a strange, leaf-shaped little vessel later – much to Raziel’s distaste – we arrived in the great city of Vivec. To this day, I have never forgotten the sight of the city’s cantons rising up out of the still water, the splash of water against the side of the boat, or the snap of brightly coloured banners flapping cheerfully in the wind overhead as we glided past flat-helmeted gondoliers. 

I would have liked to stay for longer in Vivec, but the long voyage to Vvardenfell had made me restless and eager to see more of the island. Looking back, it shames me to think that, after half a lifetime of learning from books, how little I knew about that strange country, and what I might have learned had I taken the time to experience it all properly.

It took only the rest of the day to reach Ald’ruhn, the closest proper town to Ghostgate, where we would start our hike from. The silt strider, true to its name, marched across the land on its spindly legs, first from Vivec to the riverside town of Balmora, and then when the green, rolling hills gave way to grey, ashy wasteland, from Balmora to Ald’ruhn.

There was evidence of the Empire’s reach even here, in the midst of the Ashlands, in the form of an imposing stone fort just outside the city walls. Raziel snorted disdainfully as we passed by atop the silt strider. While I didn’t share her derision, I understood her sentiments. The Dunmer have always regarded immigrants, ‘outlanders’ as they call them, to be invaders of Morrowind. In some ways their view is justified - the Imperialist approach to spreading the Empire’s influence, at least to me, has always resembled a playground bully grabbing the other children’s toys for himself while they are not looking. 

I was never a very brave or outspoken child. Though I proudly call myself a citizen of Cyrodiil, I quietly felt myself siding with Raziel.

* * *

_Chapter Three  – Ghostgate_

We set out the following morning on foot for Ghostgate. I can proudly say now that I handled the walk much better than I had anticipated, partly due to Raziel's recommendation that we stock up on scrolls of feather to ease the burden of all the supplies and gear that we had to carry. Between us we carried a tent for shelter, potions to ward off disease, scrolls of levitation to help us over any impassable ground and healing, and of course, an Almsivi intervention scroll each, in case we needed to make a quick escape. We also had to carry food and water enough to last the journey, both of which would hard to come by, as there were no rivers near the mountain and we would not be able to hunt the creatures that resided there for food for fear of catching the blight disease. To protect us from the ash storms that came swirling down the mountainside, we each had a masked, armoured helmet to cover our faces.

While, to the people of mild-weathered Cyrodiil, this list may seem excessive, Raziel assured me it was essential for adventurers to stock up on such items when travelling between towns, particularly in the Ashlands where even light winds can turn the air into a stifling haze of ash and dust.

I had expected Ghostgate to be a small town, perhaps like Ald’ruhn. When we finally arrived, despite my eagerness to immerse myself in the wilds, a cold weight dropped into the pit of my stomach. A small outpost sat nestled between the slopes of the foyada we were using as a road, and stretching out in both directions like shimmering paper-cut, was the Ghostfence. This was the last place of comfort we would find for days.

Unlike the previous inn we stayed in, Raziel and I were given a single bunk to rest in, with no separation from the other patrons. Luckily our only neighbours were a few exhausted pilgrims who paid us no heed. That night, as Raziel settled down in the bunk above me, making the wooden bed-frame creak and rattle, I decided I should try to get to know my new travelling companion a little better. I would soon be sharing a tent with her in the middle of the wilderness, after all.

At first she was reluctant to talk, and when she did, she spoke in hushed tones, as if not wanting the other patrons of the hostel to overhear. Little by little, I learned that she hailed from a large family, and grew up on a guar farm on the mainland. Her childhood had been a quiet one, but she went out to make a fortune for herself at nineteen years old, and never went back. Raziel Lendas was not her real name, but when I asked her why she kept her real name a secret, she went quiet, and I tactfully changed the subject.

At some point I must have fallen asleep, for when I woke early the next morning, Raziel had already gone to make a donation at the temple downstairs to receive a blessing. I left her be until she returned, and did not question her about it. If she remembered much of the previous night’s conversation, she did not show it.

Our real concern that morning was the weather – but luckily the sky that morning was clear, and had already begun to warm the ashy ground. This alleviated the butterflies in my stomach a little – despite the protective clothing we wore, the idea of stumbling blindly through ferocious ash storms terrified me. 

With one last quick glance backward over our shoulders at the road we had taken from Ald’ruhn, we let the portcullis clang shut behind us, and stepped through to the other side of Ghostgate. 

* * *

_Chapter Four – Red Mountain_

Day 1 – 14th, Last Seed

According to the calculations we had made, the journey would take us anywhere from one and a half to two weeks if nothing went horribly wrong, in which case we had agreed to use our scrolls of Almsivi intervention to teleport back to the temple at Ghostgate. We would follow the Ghostfence clockwise - the idea was to keep the barrier in sight as much as possible. That way we could avoid wandering too close to the heart of Red Mountain even without the (horribly vague) map and compass we brought with us. 

We left the path straight away to scramble up over the rocky bank. The noise disturbed a cliff racer nesting amongst some boulders, but before it could reach us it tumbled to the ground in a broken heap, one of Raziel’s barbed arrows protruding from its neck. Raziel’s cold efficiency startled me more than it should have – I was paying her to kill anything that attacked us, after all.

The way was steep and slippery with shale – as the sun rose higher into the sky, we found ourselves having to inch our way along narrow ledges with our backs to the edge, where the rock had crumbled away. The whole way we were accompanied by the low, never-ending throb of the Ghostfence, and the shadow of Red Mountain looming over us in the distance.

The sun was just starting to dip behind the silhouette of the volcano when we passed an old wooden door set into the slope – an abandoned egg mine. We decided we would sleep inside that night, to make the use of solid shelter while we could. We were bombarded by angry wild kwama warriors almost as soon as we could set foot inside. Raziel wasted no time in shooting them down, and soon the place was littered with the creatures. She left me to dispose of the corpses outside while she went further into the caves to exterminate the rest. 

As I dragged the fallen Kwama through the cave door to clear a space for our camp, I was oddly reminded of the land the Imperial Legion had acquisitioned from the Dunmer outside Ald’ruhn.

I sat and waited by myself for a long time, unsure what to do without Raziel there to order me around. She emerged from the tunnels after a long while; her blue skin flushed an unbecoming shade of purple and spattered with Kwama blood, but in a strangely decent mood. Soon I saw why.

“Look what I found!” she exclaimed, holding her prize up for me to see. Three large white eggs, free of blemishes that came from the blight-disease. She flashed her toothy smile at me again, and this time I shared her sentiments. 

* * *

_Chapter 5 – Not Alone_

Day 2 – 15th, Last Seed

My muscles groaned in protest when I awoke the next morning – the long days of travel were already starting to take their toll. Moreover, the sky outside had darkened, but not with rain clouds. Raziel swore when she saw them.

“Looks like Red Mountain’s been belching smoke – if the wind picks up, we’re in for an ash storm,” she said, sniffing the sulphurous air. “We’d better keep our masks handy.”

Luckily the wind stayed calm, and our path along the Ghostfence evened out, much to my relief. Our progress was much quicker than the day before. 

Around noon, a cluster of spires rose out of the grey hills, coated in dust and ash so thickly I had to persuade Raziel to come closer with me so I could get a better look. While she yawned and paced impatiently back and forth behind me, I painstakingly chipped away the caked-on grime with my dagger until I had uncovered enough of the building to take a proper look. 

The metal the Dwemer used in their construction was as mysterious as the history books made out, but I recognised the architecture right away now that I had seen what it was made of. When I placed my palms flat against it, I felt the faintest, repetitive thrum beneath them. With a shiver of excitement, I realised they were vibrations from still-functioning machinery deep within the complex. 

Excitedly, I suggested we try to find a way inside, but Raziel shook her head.

“If there’s still machinery down there, then there’ll be guards too. Monsters made of flesh and bone I can kill, but I’m not fighting off homicidal machines.” The longer I argued the more tight-lipped and stubborn the hunter became, until I had to give up. Reluctantly, I followed her back between the ancient buildings towards the pathway, leaving the ruins behind, for some other, braver adventurer to explore some day.

We had almost reached the path when Raziel grabbed my shoulder and shoved me backwards, hard enough to send me sprawling on my back. My pack crunched painfully underneath me as I landed on it. Though I squeezed my eyes shut, I heard a twang as she fired an arrow, a strange, low groan and a wet ‘thump’ – then before I had time to even wonder what it all meant, Raziel hauled me back to my feet, muttering her apologies. A strange figure lay in the dust, sticky blood starting to pool beneath it. From its shape I could not work out what it was, and I took a step closer.

“Wait, don’t look!” Raziel’s protest came a moment too late. I recoiled sharply with a cry when I saw what the creature was – a man, or rather, what was left of a man, with his skull carved open at the front, a gaping hole where his face should have been.

“What _is_ that?” my voice cracked as I stumbled backwards, but I was still too horrified to feel any shame. Raziel shuddered and turned away too, following me over to a dead tree stump a short distance away where I sat down heavily.

“They’re called Ash Zombies – brainless things, empty shells of the people they once were,” she explained as she sat beside me. 

“You mean there might be _more_ of them?!” bile rose in my throat as my head filled with horrifying scenarios of what might happen if we crossed paths with a mob of the creatures. I hoped Raziel would shake her head and assure me with her usual quiet confidence that we were safe; that she was no match for Red Mountain’s twisted denizens. Perhaps she’d even bare her teeth in one of her sudden, disarming smiles. 

No such luck. Instead, she just pursed her lips together into a hard line.

“If you want to turn back, I won’t stop you,” she told me. She gestured at her pack, where our scrolls of Almsivi intervention were tucked away. “Use one of those, and we’ll be back in Vivec by this time tomorrow. It’s your choice.” We sat there in silence for a long moment, both lost in our thoughts. I could almost feel the warmth of the crackling fire in the inn in Ald’ruhn we had stayed in. However, I had come so far already, and I was certainly not ready to return to Cyrodiil.

“No,” I said eventually, putting on what I hoped was an expression of determination, though my insides felt watery as the Mazte they’d served at the Ghostgate hostel. “We’ll see this through.”

The sky turned black long before sundown, the clouds of ash knitting together to blot out the sun. Reluctant to turn in so soon, we lit our lanterns and carried on, the noise of the Ghostfence the only sound apart from our weary footfalls the cries of distant cliff racers. The path curved away towards the mountain, but we followed it anyway, not wanting to risk climbing the slippery rocks in the gloomy half-light while our hands were full. Every so often, Raziel would freeze and hiss at me to cover my lantern, and I would linger uncertainly in the middle of the path by myself while she poked around behind the rocks or scrappy, sickly-looking shrubs poking their way through the barren soil. I assumed she was looking for more ash zombies, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask. 

When it became too dark to continue, we erected our tent – with some difficulty, as I had somehow misplaced the instructions – and took turns to sit awake and keep watch. Unlike the wilderness of Cyrodiil or the rest of Vvardenfell, where the air would be filled with the sounds of nocturnal creatures, owls, bats, the howls of wolves, Red Mountain descended into silence. Real silence, the heavy, hollow quiet you only hear when you are truly alone.

But we weren’t alone – we had seen that for ourselves that afternoon.

The silence terrified me.


	2. Chapter 2

_ Chapter 6 – Still Not Alone _

Day 3 – 16 th , Last Seed

The sky had not changed since we turned in. Had Raziel not woken me, I would never have been able to tell it was morning. I sat up, bleary-eyed and groggy. I’d barely slept at all, but we couldn’t afford to lose the morning – walking was easier before the heat of midday, and though the ash clouds made it difficult to see, we were thankful that they kept the warmth trapped beneath them when darkness fell, but stopped the sun from scorching us during the daytime.   


A strangely warm breeze tugged at our clothes as we packed the tent away, and from Raziel’s dubious glances in the direction of the mountain, I could tell that this was not a good sign. 

“Wear your helmet today,” she said, when I questioned her about it.   


We set off along the path, still heading inwards, until we came to a long rope bridge across a wide foyada. I hung back as Raziel stepped onto it – it swayed and creaked under her weight, but the ropes held fast, and by the time she turned to see where I was, she was nearly halfway across. 

I couldn’t see her expression clearly from where I stood, but when her voice, muffled by her helmet, floated across to me, it was full of exasperation.

“Are you coming?” she called, tapping her foot. I meekly followed, though I kept my gaze planted firmly on my feet.  Raziel turned back to the other side, about to carry on, but stopped in her tracks. Not properly looking where I was going, I nearly collided with her.

“Hold it.” She stuck an arm out to steady me, but she was still staring at the other end of the bridge. I followed her gaze, puzzled.

“Are those…  _ people _ ?”  I squinted over Raziel’s shoulder at the congregation on the opposite bank, scarcely daring to believe that we weren’t the only ones on this side of the Ghostfence after all.

Something about them bothered me, though. A few of the figures stumbled around as if in a daze, while another clutched his head and fell to his knees. None of them wore packs, or protective gear like ours. An inhuman wail reached our ears, making the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Raziel nocked an arrow.

“Get ready to run,” she warned, and a second later, the figure tumbled over the edge of the foyada, stirring up a trail of dust as his corpse rolled down the side and landed at the bottom, her arrow piercing its neck. My mouth dropped open in shock.   


“ _ What  _ do you think you’re–“   


“ _ RUN _ !” Raziel had nocked another arrow, but the other figures had heard her and were running towards us, their bare feet churning up the ashy soil in their wake. When I saw their wide-eyed, empty gaze and the festering boils that covered their bare flesh, my limbs felt as though they had turned to scrib jelly. Raziel glanced back over her shoulder at me and groaned. 

The bridge lurched violently, answering her with a groan of its own. It sagged under the weight of the creatures, but they kept advancing, and now I heard their ragged, agonised breaths, saw the thin trails of spittle gleaming at the corners of their mouths. 

Raziel swore and unsheathed the dagger she kept in a sheath on her belt, holding it out in front of her like a warning. Our assailants ignored it. 

“Hold on to something,” she commanded, and somehow I willed myself to move, to tear my eyes away from the advancing creatures and fumble around for a decent handhold. 

The bridge twisted and jerked as she sliced cleanly through the brittle support ropes on one side. One of the creatures went hurtling over the side, its swollen fingers clawing the air. Its wail cut short as it hit the ground far below, just as its fallen comrade had. “Don’t let go!” Raziel barked, and cut the rope on the other side. The bridge lurched again. Our attackers’ wails echoed in my head long after they hit the ground.

We stayed as still as we could, the bridge shuddering under our weight without the support ropes to keep it steady. It was onto the frayed and dangling ends of these ropes we clung, not daring to move for fear we would snap the whole bridge in two. It was Raziel who spoke first.

“Well, now you’ve seen what the Corprus disease does.”    


She said it so matter-of-factly that I had to glance away. The subject of Corprus was a volatile one between us. Before we left for Vvardenfell, Raziel had taken the liberty of describing to me in great detail – in terms far more graphic than the watered-down books I had read – the effect of the disease on anyone unfortunate enough to contract it. Her stories chilled me to the bone, but I made a show of shrugging it off. What a fool she must have thought me.

A keening cry rose up from the foyada below. One of the creatures was still alive, trying to pull his broken body up on skeletal arms.   


“Can’t we do something?”

“The only thing to do is kill them before they infect anyone else.” With some difficulty, Raziel managed to nock an arrow without tumbling over the side of the bridge, aiming down at the creature through the gaps in the planks.   


“Wait!” I started forward, forgetting our precarious situation in my haste to stop her. The bridge tilted dizzyingly. Raziel’s hand darted out and grabbed my wrist, and for the longest moment I hung there, dangling by one arm from a swaying, broken rope bridge, with only a red-eyed mercenary between me and a painful death.

I shut my eyes and prayed.

* * *

_ Chapter 7 – A Change in Fortune _

“The sensible thing to do would be to turn back,” Raziel commented when we finally reached the other side of the foyada. She tossed away the empty bottle from her levitation potion. It shattered against a rock. “We’re halfway through our potion supplies, and the scrolls won’t last forever.”

She spoke the truth. We had used our healing potions to treat all kinds of minor injuries so far, a twisted ankle here, a leg scraped open on a rock there – mostly on my part, I admit. And now we had to waste two more potions of levitation out of my foolishness. This was only the third day since we left Ghostgate. We had at least a week of travel ahead of us.   


“I want to press on,” I told her firmly, wishing I felt as confident as I sounded. “If we get into trouble, we can always teleport back to Ghostgate. I want to see this through to the end.”   


“We had better keep our eyes peeled, then,” was all she said. Behind her helmet I could imagine her frowning.

The ash storm hit that very evening. The sky turned a menacing, bruise-like reddish-purple just as we reached the Ghostfence once more, and the air became so thick with ash we could barely see an arm’s length before our faces. Despite our helmets, even breathing became a battle, as the wind blew the ash into every nook and cranny it could reach. 

The shadow of some Dwemer ruins appeared like a phantom out of the thick air, and grateful for any semblance of shelter it might offer, we stumbled towards it, blindly at times, our eyes streaming from coughing that wracked our bodies. 

The Ghostfence disappeared into the murk. Straying from our path was by no means our first mistake that day, but from that moment onwards, something in our luck changed.   


The bridge was too big to provide effective shelter – the wind simply howled right through the arches. However, the entrance to the ruins lay just on the other side, the half-moon shaped doors blown back on their hinges, so we stumbled across and piled through them, into the groaning building. Raziel heaved the doors shut behind us, gasping with the effort. The wind might have slammed them back as if they had been made of paper, but it took all of her strength to close them.

We sat there in the darkness, listening to the echo of debris clanging off the metal walls, and the rumble of distant machinery below us. So, I thought, perhaps I would get to see the remnants of Dwemer culture after all. I couldn’t quite bring myself to feel triumphant.

“Are you hurt?” Raziel’s voice was clearer now, for she had pulled her helmet off and tossed it aside. I did the same as she fumbled around for her tinderbox. The wind had blown both of our lanterns out.   


“No, I’m fine.” Raziel’s face appeared out of the darkness, ghostly-green and flickering in the orange light from her sputtering lantern. She glanced me over and nodded, satisfied that I was telling the truth. The gesture reminded me so much of a strict hospital matron that I burst out laughing. Raziel blinked her red eyes at me, and her expression of confusion just made me laugh harder. 

Rather than trying to sober myself up, I welcomed the distraction, though my lungs still burned and I soon collapsed into a violent coughing fit. It is only now that I’ll admit I was nearly hysterical. 

* * *

_ Chapter 8 – Painful Reminders _

Day 4 – 17 th , Last Seed

The ash storm was still raging when I awoke, though judging by the snores coming from the other side of the entrance chamber, it was not morning yet. Both of our lanterns had burned down, and it took me several minutes of stumbling around in the darkness to find the tinderbox again. I woke Raziel in the process, and she glared blearily up at me from her bedroll. She was still cross with me for the night before. Apparently madness is one of the first symptoms of Corprus disease, and Dunmer consider hysteria to be one of the first symptoms of madness.   


“You really are mad,” she said bluntly when I explained to her my plan of exploring the ruins, which I would later learn were called Bthanchend. It took several hours of pleading before she gave in, more out of her own curiosity than my skills in persuasion.   


Since neither of us had set foot past the tiny chamber we were using as our camp site, Raziel scouted on ahead to check for mechanical sentinels I had read about in books. Though she had assured me fiercely that she was not prepared to go up against them in battle, she told me we might be able to sneak past them. 

She returned a short while later, a finger pressed to her lips, and beckoned for me to follow her, down a flight of metal stairs into the main building. After a while we came to a pair of doors, and Raziel held out her hand and leaned over to whisper in my ear.

“Listen,” she said, and I did so obediently. For a while all I could hear was the building creaking and shuddering around us, but beneath the racket came a faint metallic grinding noise.   


“What is that?” I bent closer to the door to listen more closely, one hand outstretched, about to rest on the door so I could place my ear against the metal. I barely even thought about what I was doing, but Raziel darted forward with a cry of alarm.

“No, you fool! Don’t touch-“ she never got to finish her sentence, as a blistering wave of heat shot up my arm and I was thrown backwards against her.    


I must have blacked out, for the next thing I knew Raziel was bent over me, dousing my hand in water from her drinking flask. Crumpled on the ground beside her were the remains of my scorched sleeve. When I tried to speak, as soon as I opened my mouth a dizzying wave of nausea rippled over me, and all that escaped was a moan. Raziel thrust a potion into my other hand.

“Drink this, quickly,” she ordered. Too weak to argue even if I had wanted to, I drained the bottle in one go. “The trap you set off burned your hand pretty badly. Luckily you fell on your side and smothered the flames.” I didn’t feel lucky. My head spun, and my hand felt as though it was still on fire.

“It hurts,” I croaked pathetically. I expected Raziel to snort, or tell me to pull myself together. Instead, she handed me a rolled-up length of parchment. I didn’t have to unroll it to tell what it was.   


“If we get you to a temple healer now, it might not even scar,” she said when I pushed it away. “You’re in pain.”   


“I’ll survive.” I forced out between gritted teeth, but I could already see that Raziel was not going to accept this.

“Is this excursion really worth more to you than your life? You’re not going to even make it back to Cyrodiil if you carry on like this, let alone write your book. You’ll  _ need _ hands for that, in case you weren’t aware.” I had to smile despite her snippy tone. Since she was being sarcastic, I figured I was in no real chance of dying from my injuries – although with Raziel one never could tell.   


After another hour of trying to browbeat me into ending my journey, Raziel eventually gave up, and settled for mixing up a thick paste from our medicinal supplies. It was gritty, and stung agonizingly when she rubbed it on, but she assured me that with crushed Aloe Vera leaves from Cyrodiil, Marshmerrow and Black anther, it would sooth even the most painful burns. 

That was another thing Raziel taught me about the Dunmer people – their general attitude when it comes to medicine is ‘everything gets worse before it gets better’. 

* * *

_ Chapter 9 – Exploration _

Day 5 – 18 th , Last Seed

I remained in the entrance chamber after that, trying not to think about my scorched hand or how far we had yet to travel before our supplies ran out. The wind showed no sign of abating, which made my mood even worse. Raziel grew sick of my moping after just a few hours, and disappeared back down into the ruins, resurfacing every so often to remind me to me something of interest she had found and ask if it was worth anything. As she worked her way deeper and deeper through the complex her visits grew less frequent, until I finally snapped out of my mood long enough to begin to worry about her. 

She appeared, looking bedraggled but self-satisfied, just as I was about to go and search for her. In her arms she carried a heavy-looking Dwemer blade, which I thought was the reason behind her grin, but she shook her head and beckoned for me to follow her.   


“I managed to find a way around those trapped doors, without having to risk breaking through them,” she explained. “I also found the source of that noise we heard before.” My interest sufficiently piqued, I followed behind her, though this time I kept my hands firmly to myself.   


The corridors grew hotter and more humid as we descended, though they all looked so similar it gave the impression they went on forever, right down into the heart of Red Mountain.   


“We’re getting close,” Raziel assured me, and then added, coyly, “You’ll like this.”   


She finally stopped in front of a similar pair of doors to the one I had burned myself on. The noise was louder now, and the floor shuddered under our feet. A shiver of excitement ran through me – this was the same thing I had felt from outside the first ruin we came across. Raziel leant on the doors with all her weight, and as they swung heavily inwards, the noise grew to a roar. “Don’t touch anything,” she warned. As if she needed to tell me.   


We emerged into a round, hot chamber, the air thick with steam. Through the haze, however, I could see wheels turning and pistons pumping, every bit as exotic – and absurd – as I could ever have imagined.

Even more unbelievably, whereas the corridors we had just traversed were cloaked in darkness, this chamber was lit flickeringly with a sickly yellow glow from what looked like glass bulbs set into the walls.   


“Incredible,” I breathed. Aware that Raziel had been expecting a somewhat more dramatic reaction, but feeling too overwhelmed to think of anything profound to say, I settled for the obvious. “This is Dwemer machinery – and it’s still running!”

“How are they still working after so long? Do the guards keep them running?” Raziel looked genuinely interested.   


“I believe the Dwemer harnessed energy from deep within Red Mountain. We’re standing on volcanic ground, after all. Perhaps the heat from the molten rock under the ground provides the power to keep the machines running by themselves.” I told her, pleased to know something she did not, for once.

“Is that even possible?” she wondered, wide-eyed.   


“Indeed it is – the steam escaping from those pipes is produced by hot water. I’d say the Dwemer built these machines to pump water from down far below the ground to a place where heat turns it to steam, which in turn drives some kind of generator and produced all the light and heat they could ever have needed.” Though these theories were by no means my own, Raziel fell silent and gazed at me with such admiration – an expression that seemed as foreign on her face as a guar in a pottery shop – that I admit I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell her I had read it all in a book.


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter 10 – Procrastination and Escape_

Day 6 - 19th, Last Seed

Raziel led me around the remainder of the ruins, which did not take very long as most of the complex looked as though it had been buried long ago in a violent rockslide. Someone had evidently been there before us, as the remains of broken excavation equipment lay scattered around. There was no other sign of life anywhere, and with a shudder I wondered what had become of the explorers, to have abandoned their belongings like that.

“They probably trapped that door, to stop anyone else from finding the machines and claiming the discovery for themselves,” Raziel commented. Gloomily, I decided that if something _had_ happened to them, I felt no sympathy. We returned to the entrance chamber, where we sat in silence except for the rhythm-less scrape of Raziel sharpening her new sword, and the ruins creaking in the gale.

In my pack I had tucked away a small ream of lightweight parchment for documenting our adventure. So far I hadn’t even touched it, simply because so much had happened in the last week I couldn’t think where to begin. I said as much to Raziel, more to break the silence than anything else, but she barely glanced up.

“Start at the beginning,” she shrugged, and promptly returned to her task. I did as she said. I’d been following her orders for the last six days, after all. The habit had worked so far. 

So, trying not to think too hard, I wrote, using my left hand and steadying the paper on my knee with the elbow of my injured one, until my muscles felt as though they were tied in knots. My handwriting was almost illegible by the time I lay down my quill, but the faint sense of accomplishment I felt even masked the pain from my burns a little. I fell asleep before Raziel snuffed out the lanterns for the first time in days. 

* * *

Day 7 - 20th, Last Seed

I awoke to the noise of Raziel kicking open the doors of Bthanchend. Rather, the noise of her kicking them in frustration as they refused to open any more than a crack. The dull ‘clang’ of her booted foot colliding with solid metal echoed around the chamber. The noise of the storm, which I had slowly learned to ignore, had faded completely. The storm was over.

“What are you doing?” I started lamely. The look she gave me told me she thought as much of the conversation-starter as I did.

“Just come and give me a hand.” Since I was in no place to argue with her, I obeyed. Even though we threw ourselves against the doors, still they would not budge. We sank to the ground, exhausted and sweaty. “Just perfect,” Raziel muttered. “First we’re nearly blown away by the storm, now we’re trapped in here by the debris.” 

I said nothing, though my heart began to beat a little faster at hearing such bleak words – even if they were from a Dunmer. She suddenly turned her head towards me. “D’you think you can you spare some of that Mazte?”

“E-excuse me?” I shot upright like a cliff racer with its tail on fire, nearly cracking my head on the wall behind me. “What makes you think I have alcohol on me?” Raziel just rolled her eyes.

“Spare me, old man. I know Dunmer liquor when I smell it. You stocked up on the stuff before we left Ghostgate.” She had me there. Though how she knew was beyond me – I had kept the bottle hidden amongst my belongings, only taking it out when I was sure she wasn’t looking. Though I had only brought the drink to warm me up on the cold nights, I didn’t want my only companion in the wilderness to think I was some kind of drunk. That, and I had seen enough drunken Dark Elves in the imperial city to think twice about offering her any.

Cursing Raziel’s sharp nose, I produced the bottle and handed it to her. Sure enough, she took an unashamedly long swig from it and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Deciding that manners could wait until we reached civilization once more, I followed suit. It didn’t take long before we were both hopelessly drunk.

“When I publish my book, I’m going to spend the rest of my life sitting by my fireplace in a cosy chair,” I informed Raziel, when the bottle lay empty and discarded on the floor. “I’ve had enough adventures in the last few days to last me a lifetime!”

“That’s all well and good,” grumbled Raziel from where she lay on the cold floor, “but where am I in all of this?”

“Well, you could run guided tours around the mountain. You’ll make a fortune.” Raziel smirked at this.

“Ah yes, come and sample the delights of Red Mountain! Catch fantastic views of barren wasteland! Be thrilled as the footbridges snap beneath your very feet! Gasp in excitement as the local wildlife tries to wrest your very head from its shoulders!”

“Be warmed by long-lasting Dwemer hospitality!” I chimed in, holding up my weeping hand in a mock salute.

“Feel the bracing Ashland weather! And at the end of the day, why not taste our delicious local cuisine!” Raziel finished, waving a limp slice of dried hound meat at me. “That’s right, show me some idiots willing to make this trip, and I’ll show you some idiots I wouldn’t mind relieving of a few thousand Septims.” Our smiles faded for a moment as these words sunk in, until Raziel suddenly snorted, and we both collapsed into helpless laughter once more. 

“Come on,” she managed to force out when she had finally recovered, which took a few attempts. She clambered to her feet, swaying back and forth as she struggled to stay upright. “I’m sick of this room. Let’s get out of here.” She spat on her palms and threw herself up against the doors once more, groaning in her effort. I joined her, though with my hand in such a state I could only brace my shoulder against the door and push down against the floor with my feet – which, given my level of fitness, was about as effective as fighting a horde of goblins armed only with a feather duster. 

But it _was_ working, much to my amazement. 

“Ah, Mazte. Makes you strong as an Orgrim, then leaves you with a hangover the size of its mother!” Raziel rasped, as the doors groaned their way open, inch by inch, until we had made a gap through which a thick, dusty beam of light filled up the chamber. Cool air washed over us, and we both sighed deeply – then nearly collapsed into a violent coughing fit as we each inhaled a lungful of ash.

“Ugh, that’s foul.” Raziel spat out a mouthful of dust and wiped her mouth on her sleeve again. Still, the look of giddy triumph remained plastered across her face, and one after the other, we squeezed through the opening of the ruins.

We emerged to grey, watery sunlight struggling through the haze of ash left in the wake of the storm. Our feet sunk into mounds of the stuff that had piled up behind the doors – and nearly trapped us inside. What I remember the most though, is the utter stillness. While I had grown slowly accustomed to the noises of the Ashlands on our journey, the wind whistling down the narrow rocky pathways, and the distant cries of cliff racers, now there was no sound at all, just a lingering emptiness that made my head spin. Or maybe that was the Mazte. My exertions had made me feel suddenly ill.

“Shall we celebrate our success, perhaps?” Raziel looked at me hopefully, obviously angling for more alcohol. I sat down on a rock and buried my face in my hands. Somehow between the two of us, we’d consumed a whole bottle of Dunmer liquor – _strong_ Dunmer liquor - in the space of half an hour. “We drank the lot,” I told her from between my fingers. “There isn’t any more.” Then, under my breath, I added, “Thank goodness.”

* * *

  _Chapter 11 – The Aftermath_

When Raziel and I finally sobered up enough to think about moving on before the day escaped us, we gathered what remained of our supplies and set off back in the direction of the Ghostfence. The lenses in our helmets were hopelessly scratched up by the ash storm, so we tied rags over our faces so as not to breathe in too much of the dust pervading the air. They did nothing to protect our eyes though, and soon they became red and raw from us trying to rub the grit out of them – which of course only made the pain worse. However, we both knew that our supplies would only last a few more days without severe rationing, and we hadn’t even hit our half-way mark yet. We had to press on.

The Ghostfence turned out to be far closer to Bthanchend than we had first thought, and we reached it long before midday, to our relief. Finally, we were back on course. Almost immediately we came to a slope so steep and slippery with shale as to be unclimbable. We had passed such obstacles before with levitation potions, but now we only had one left each. Neither of us wanted to leave the Ghostfence again to find another way round though, so soon after finding it again. Perhaps tempting fate, but desperate to make up as much lost time as we could, we downed the potions anyway.

Desperate, too, were the cliff racers that had been driven into shelter by the storm, just like we had. After Raziel shot down the third horde of the creatures that formed overhead to attack, I began to wonder if we had stumbled across a nesting ground. Soon I realised, with growing dread as the air filled again with the noise of wings beating the air and the racers’ piercing cries, that it was more like a hunting ground.

Vastly outnumbered, we tried to flee, but our packs slowed us down, and we were already tired. A sharp blow from the tail of one nearly sent me flying, but Raziel caught my arm and dragged me down behind a scraggly bush. I felt, rather than saw her fumbling with her bow as the cliff racers circled around overhead.

“Don’t move. The stupid things will wait for us to come out by ourselves. If we stay put, I can pick them off from here.”

One by one, the beasts tumbled to the ground in a tangle of bloodied wings and claws, Raziel’s arrows piecing their hearts. We finally emerged back out into the open, shaken but alive. I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask just how Raziel had known to hide rather than face the creatures out in the open. I hoped she’d simply read about it somewhere.

Later on, we passed the desiccated, torn body of a man who had not been as lucky as we had. His flesh hung from his bones in gruesome tatters, ravaged by the Corprus disease and ferocious cliff racer beaks.   
  
“Eating Corprus-flesh is a sure-fire way of becoming infected.“ Raziel said darkly, as I fought back a wave of nausea. “They were probably too starving even to care if the meat was diseased or not. We better stay on our guard.” 

* * *

Day 8 – 21st, Last Seed

That night my sleep was plagued by nightmares. In my dream I was being chased by cliff racers, and though I searched frantically for a place to hide, as Raziel had taught me, my surroundings were flat and empty as a desert. Ahead lay a deep foyada with a bridge stretching across it, as far as I could see. In my panic I ran straight out across it, only to collide with the half-devoured man.

I think it was his face, with the same expression of confusion and terror that I had seen on other Corprus-infected, that finally shocked me awake, although when I came to my senses, Raziel was hovering over me anxiously. 

“You were making noises. Are you in pain?” She gestured at my hand, which was cracked and weeping everywhere, but it took me a while to realise what she meant. I’d been in pain for the last three days, and now it had settled into a deep, steady ache, which I could just manage to ignore if I concentrated hard enough on something, _anything_ , else. 

I shrugged her question off, not particularly wanting to recount my nightmares to her. The Dunmer are famously wary of those who suffer from nightmares, and I suspect she had already half convinced herself I was out of my mind for continuing on with our journey, despite all of the obstacles that had been thrown up against us. 

As soon as the sun rose properly we set off once more, though I would have liked nothing more than to spend the whole day sleeping. Raziel seemed subdued too, so we trudged onward in silence. We had almost reached our half way mark, but even that hardly seemed a reason to celebrate – it simply meant more long days of travel ahead of us.

Our half-way mark, a small, ruined Daedric shrine called Assalkushalit, finally appeared late that afternoon, but to reach it meant we had to head away from the fence, which, in my current mood, I couldn’t help but feel was a waste of time. I’d read about Daedric shrines back in Cyrodiil, and I had absolutely no intention of going inside this one. I said as much to Raziel, who just shrugged in her usual way.

“You’re here now, so you might as well look around now you’ve come all this way.” My companion’s uncharacteristic display of reasonability must have surprised even her, because next she said gruffly, “I haven’t let you drag me halfway around Red Mountain just so you can sit in a tent and sulk.”

To reach the shrine, we had to cross a wide foyada on a frayed-looking rope bridge. I tried to push the last remnants of my nightmare to the back of my mind, but it did nothing to improve my mood.

Assalkushalit was nothing like the modest Daedric statues we have back at home in Cyrodiil. The skeletal stone remains of the outer shrine towered over us as we picked our way between them. A few times Raziel and I jumped, when we thought we saw movement in the shadows. I suppose it is only fitting that a shrine to Sheogorath should leave unwanted visitors in such a state.

We came out into a small courtyard, where a pack of scamps were assailing a man. Their shrieks of excitement filled the air as they launched themselves at him, tearing at him with their claws. 

“Raziel, they’ll kill him!” Raziel kept her weapons sheathed.

“Would you keep it down?!” she hissed witheringly at me. “He’s already half dead. Look closer.” Puzzled, I tried to get a better look at the man through the mob of flailing scamps, but it was only when he let out an animal-like howl I realised what Raziel meant. 

“He’s infected with Corprus!” Raziel nodded, and turned to leave. 

“Come on, we can get around that lot while they’re distracted.” I stayed where I was, unable to take my eyes off the massacre in front of me.

“You can’t just leave him, he’ll be ripped apart!”

“He’s dead either way!” Raziel retorted. She made sense, of course, but that was the maddening thing about Raziel. Every decision she had made on this journey so far had been for survival, not mercy. Mercy seemed a concept somehow foreign to her, as if it were a luxury one couldn’t afford in Morrowind. Maybe it was. At that point I was beyond caring. 

Before I had really thought properly about what I was doing, I tore off my pack, jumped out into the open and started running towards the scamps, sure in my lack of forethought that Raziel would follow with her bow at the ready. 

“Hey! HEY!” thrilled at having more exciting prey presented so conveniently to them, the scamps threw themselves after me as I turned and fled back towards our hiding place, their quarry forgotten. Raziel’s expression was unreadable, but she drew her sword and stepped out to meet my pursuers.

The scamps’ screeches of excitement soon turned to screams of fear and agony as one by one Raziel cut them down. Though the carnage, I could see the Corprus-afflicted man stumbling away, with barely the strength barely to keep his ravaged body upright. As the last scamp fell to her blade, Raziel tossed aside her weapon and grabbed her bow from her shoulder. With rising horror I realised what she was about to do.

“No, stop!” With a burst of strength I hadn’t felt for a long time, I launched myself at her, knocking her right off her feet. Her arrow clattered uselessly to the ground, where it lay in the dust. When I looked again, the man had gone, with only a trail of footprints left behind.

I held out my hand to help Raziel to her feet, but in an instant she sprang upright and seized me by the collar of my robe, yanking me forwards so our faces were mere inches apart.

“ _You s’wit_!” she spat, “You couldn’t just listen to me, could you? You nearly got us _both_ killed!”

“He wasn’t going to hurt us! He ran away!”

“I could have given it a quick death!” I had seen Raziel angry before, but her eyes were burning now with an intensity that made me flinch. She gripped my collar tighter in her fists and leaned in even closer, so I could not even look away. For the first time since we first met, I felt truly and deeply afraid of her. When she spoke again, her voice was low and shaky with rage.

“Do you want to know what’s to become of the _thing_ you just ‘saved’? Soon it’ll lose whatever remnants of humanity it has left, and then it’ll wander around Red Mountain in unimaginable agony until it can’t walk any more, and gets torn apart by cliff racers.” she flung me aside and picked up her fallen weapons. “When will you get it through your thick skull? There’s no hope for the Corprus-infected. No cure. Only death, and if it comes just a little sooner by my hand, then count it as a blessing.” I could only stare open-mouthed as Raziel finished her tirade.

“And if one of us becomes infected?” I muttered, afraid of the answer but unable to hold the question back any longer. 

“If you catch Corprus, I’ll kill you in a heartbeat,” she said simply. “And I’d expect you to do the same for me.” My gaze fell to her arrow, still lying amongst the dirt and scamp blood. It only seemed to make her words even more chilling.

When I looked up again, Raziel was gone, and so was her travel-pack, but the footprints the Corprus-afflicted man had left were now accompanied by familiar boot-prints, leading off between the crumbling stone walls of the shrine, off in the opposite direction to the Ghostfence. 

I was alone.


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter 12 – Lost & Found _

Dusk fell swiftly, and still Raziel did not return. In the darkness, the shrine was even more imposing, and I wanted nothing more than to get as far away from there as possible. Eventually, as the last moments of daylight faded, the possibility that Raziel had actually abandoned me for good began to sink in. Though I didn’t want to believe my guide would just leave me to the mercy of the Ashlands, the longer I thought about it the more likely it seemed. After all, who would miss me? There was no-one waiting for me back home in Cyrodiil. If anyone enquired about me, Raziel could simply have told them I had perished. Eaten by cliff racers. Gone without a trace.

As panic set in, I tore open my pack and fumbled around for my Almsivi Intervention scroll. I needn’t have bothered. Raziel had packed it away with her own after I refused to use it at Bthanchend. A cold realization settled over me. I was alone now, defenceless, in the heart of the Ashlands. However, I had the tent, and a few days’ provisions left. With no escape and nothing to lose, what else could I do but carry on?

Assalkushalit was nigh impossible to navigate in the dark. I knew we had come across a rope bridge to reach it, but as I wandered around trying to find it again I thought I took a wrong turning and retraced my steps, only to find myself in another unfamiliar area. Eventually I came out onto something vaguely resembling a path, and since I had no intention of going back, I followed it. Soon it forked off in opposite directions, but with a strange kind of certainty that whichever path I chose would lead me somewhere else, and that somewhere would be better than where I was now.

I turned left, and soon the outline of the Ghostfence appeared out of the night, a faint purple beacon that made me nearly cry with relief. The rhythmic throbbing sound I had grown so accustomed to soon followed. Funny how something so seemingly foreign can become a source of comfort when you most need it.

Somehow I managed to erect my tent by lamplight. Raziel and I had used up much of our oil keeping our makeshift shelter lit in Bthanchend. Raziel had taken the rest of the oil with her too, and by the time I finally settled down on my bedroll I barely had enough light to scrawl down the day’s events, my hand shaking as I recounted our fight in my head. 

I awoke with a start to utter darkness, disorientated and with no idea whether I had been asleep for hours or mere moments. Somewhere outside the noise of stones clattering jolted me upright. The noise faded, and though I strained my ears, the sound of my heart pounding filled my head, making it impossible to discern whether the noise had been real or if I was still half-dreaming.

All doubt faded from my mind when I caught the unmistakable noise of footsteps drawing closer. Had Raziel come looking for me? Or had the Corprus-infected man I had saved from her arrows found me instead? I huddled in my corner, hoping, _praying_ it wasn’t the latter. The tent shook violently as the tent flap whipped open. The next thing I knew, a flickering orange light flooded in as Raziel stuck her head through the doorway, looking thoroughly dishevelled.  

“You didn’t half give me a fright, you old fool!” she gasped, clambering through and dumping her pack – and her sputtering lantern – on the floor, before collapsing in a heap on the other side. 

“I could say the same thing to you!” Raziel was too occupied with rooting through my pack to pay any notice to my retort. After a while she gave up, muttering obscure Dunmer swear words under her breath. 

“I’ve run out of lamp oil,” she explained, hastily snuffing out her lantern and plunging us back into darkness. “I went back to the ruins just after nightfall, thinking you’d still be there. Lucky I had a light on me at all. I don’t fancy the idea of sleeping in the open all the way out here.” I felt my face flush with guilt at this, although it had been Raziel who left _me_.

“How did you find me?”

“Sheer luck.”

“Sorry.” There was an awkward pause in which neither of us moved, not wanting to break the silence first. Eventually Raziel sighed.

“No,” she began, carefully, as if testing the words before saying them. “I was wrong to just leave you like that. And you’re not a s’wit.” 

“Well, I should hope not –”

“–I mean, anything could have happened to you, you could have had a cliff racer tear your arms off, or fallen into a foyada and broken your neck…” I shifted uncomfortably.

“Well, we’re both here now–“

“–Or wandered into a pack of starving Kwama–”

“Yes, alright! I get your point. We’ll stick together from now on!” It was only after we both settled down to sleep that I realised that, somehow, Raziel had made me feel guilty about _her_ transgression.

* * *

_Chapter 13 – Truth at Last_

The hours passed slowly, and we lay awake in silence. There were many things I wanted to say to Raziel, not the least of which was the hardest thing I _could_ say, a secret I had not revealed to anyone. Somehow, I felt it had to be said, but neither could I just blurt it out, or try to undermine it. I certainly couldn’t lie to her any longer.

“So, did you track him… _it_ … down?” I said weakly. There was no need to elaborate; I knew Raziel was thinking about the same thing. At first she didn’t reply, but simply stared up in the direction of the tent roof. I could imagine her crimson eyes narrowing ever so slightly in the darkness. When she did speak, her voice was quiet, all of her usual – almost masculine – confidence having melted away. 

“You know, they call them Corprus stalkers.”

“Who?”

“Oh, you know. Everyone.” 

“You mean the temple?” 

“Mmm.” Raziel turned her head towards me. “They’ll call them anything, just to dehumanise them.” She gave a hollow, mirthless laugh. “Azura knows, it works. I always thought I had no pity whatsoever for the poor bastards. Then you come along, with all your refined ‘live and let live’ mentality. You wouldn’t last a day out here on your own.” She paused for a moment, wriggling around in her bedroll, trying to get comfortable despite the rocky ground beneath us. “Don’t ever change,” she said softly.

“What?” I turned towards her, not sure whether I had heard her correctly. She went quiet once more, and I knew that if we lapsed into silence again I would never be able to say what I had to. “I should apologise too,” I began hoarsely, my mouth suddenly dry. Again Raziel made no reply, so I took her silence as my cue to continue. 

“I haven’t been completely honest with you. About my reason for coming on this journey.” I fumbled for the right words, but now I could see I had Raziel’s attention. The silhouette of her head was raised slightly. She was watching me. “I’m a very ill man, Raziel. In fact, I’ll be lucky to live to see my sixtieth birthday.”

“You don’t look sick.” There was no judgement in her voice; she was just stating the obvious.

“I know, I don’t – at least, not yet. But I will. The doctors tell me my health will start to deteriorate soon. I’ll grow weak and tired. I won’t be able to walk. Eventually I won’t be able to so much as lift a quill. Finally I’ll just… die, I suppose.” Raziel sat up slowly, her expression unreadable in the darkness.

“You’re apologising for this?”

“Well, would you really have agreed to accompany a dying man around Red Mountain? ‘The dust-bowl of Morrowind’?” Raziel laughed quietly. “What’s so funny?”

“All this time I thought you must be suicidal, since you seem so eager to throw your life away for that book of yours. Now it turns out you’re just trying to _live_.” She lay back down with a sigh. “We should get some sleep. We’ve got a long way to go.” Bewildered, but feeling lighter than I had done in days, I followed suit. Within minutes we were both fast asleep.

* * *

  _Chapter 14 – Onward_

Day 9 – 22nd, Last Seed

Raziel said nothing of our conversation from the previous night, nor did she give any indication she remembered our fight.  We retraced our steps back to the crossroads I had found myself at the night before.

“Would you call it cheating if we were to take advantage of a road following the Ghostfence?” She mused, rubbing her pointed chin. We were standing in the bottom of what had been a wide foyada, which had been whittled down to a smooth path by decades of grit-laden wind. It curved round towards the south, and sure enough, the Ghostfence did too, never straying out of sight.

“I’d certainly call it an opportunity well taken.” I told her, and she nodded in agreement.

“Looks like it’s settled then. Let’s go.”

We made good progress, though the sun beat down on us mercilessly and my injured hand still felt as though it were on fire – the salve Raziel had mixed for me had nearly run out, and there were no more ingredients to make another batch. We had run out of most things by this time. In fact, we carried little more than the tent, our remaining rations and the two extremely battered Almsivi intervention scrolls. However, I felt as though somehow a huge burden had lifted from my shoulders. Raziel was slightly less optimistic.

“I can’t help but feel something’s amiss,” she complained when we stopped at midday. “We haven’t been attacked or injured, and this path is so _convenient_. It makes me wonder if we haven’t taken a wrong turn somewhere.”

“You’re right. Do you suppose the cliff racers are all waiting at the other end, waiting to ambush us?” Raziel’s mouth twisted into a half-sneer.

“I mean it!” I didn’t argue any more. It was impossible to argue with Raziel’s pessimism, especially since she usually turned out to be correct. Besides, as a Dunmer her attitude was as much a part of her identity as her ancestors, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to change it.

That night was cool and clear, and with it brought the same deep silence I was once so fearful of. We went without our lanterns and sat outside by starlight, not only to save the little oil we had left, but also to savour the respite from the hot sun. Though we had not been able to build a campfire since our journey began for fear we would attract hostile attention, I felt more at home out under the stars now than I ever could beside my fireplace in the Imperial City.

“I’ve never seen a falling star,” Raziel’s voice shook me out of my thoughts. She turned to me. “I expect you have, back at the Arcane University, with all your fancy machines and telescopes,” she added enviously.

“Well, as a matter of fact, ‘falling stars’ aren’t actually –“ I began to explain, but stopped myself a second later, not quite sure how to continue. Scholars have dedicated their whole lives to the study of astronomy and yet we know so little about the sky above us. And here I was, about to fill Raziel’s head with talk of tears in space, and Aetherius, things I barely understood myself. Opposite me, Raziel leaned in closer.

“Go on, I’m listening,” she urged.

“Er, well, falling stars… as I was saying, they aren’t really stars at all, but matter – that is, rocks and such – falling from the sky, and…” I trailed off again. Raziel’s disappointment was clear even in the dim light.

“Rocks?” I could have kicked myself. Mere hours ago I had called the woman a pessimist, and now here I was, shooting down the first idealistic thing that had come out of her mouth. I really was a fool. “They’re not lucky then?”

 “Well, that I couldn’t say,” I said hurriedly, eager to smooth things over. “Besides, don’t the Ashlanders say we make our own luck?”

“That is true.” Raziel’s mouth curved into a wry half-smile. “I can’t say much for Ashlander wisdom, but they’ve managed to survive this long, which is an achievement in itself.” She shook her head suddenly, as if she were stirring herself from her thoughts. “I don’t believe it, anyway,” she declared. “How can painting your face and dancing around some fire be any luckier than visiting your family shrine, or praying in a chapel?”

“Or watching a rock falling out of the sky?” I finished for her, and she smiled, her pointed teeth glinting in the starlight.

 “Exactly.”

* * *

_Chapter 15 – Disaster_

Day 10 – 23rd, Last Seed

We set off as soon as it grew light again. We couldn’t afford to lose any more time, not with our supplies running so low. At least the sky remained cloudless, and with our spirits lifted even more, even Raziel could find nothing to complain about as our destination grew ever closer. We could never have imagined that our fortune would turn so quickly against us.

It was late morning when the path began to curve back away from the Ghostfence, and after a brief assessment of the contents of our packs, we decided to leave it and return to following the fence, though the path was rockier and to my regret, our progress was slowed by the fact I only had one good hand to climb with. Eventually we reached a steep hill that took us to the very top of the Ghostfence, where a rocky outcrop had formed from years of wind erosion. Eager to take our first peek out over the fence since we entered Ghostgate, we scrambled all the way up and drank in the view with awe.

The land around us was little more a vast expanse of lifeless grey desert, but it took my breath away. The air rippled off sun-baked rocks, distorting the faint green sliver on the horizon that marked the Grazelands.

“You know, one wrong step and you’ll be on the other side of the Ghostfence in no time.” Raziel had the blackest sense of humour I had ever encountered, even amongst other Dunmer, and was proud of it. Her spiky smile was back again, too.

We were so captivated by the scenery, we never even heard the Corprus stalkers climbing the slope behind us – until one of them slipped on some shale. We both spun around at the noise, and in one fluid motion Raziel unsheathed her blade and lopped off the head of the nearest. The sheer weight of the blade made her stagger, teetering dangerously on the edge of the outcrop as the beasts lunged at her, wailing in their blind madness. Again Raziel swung the sword in a wide arc in front of her, and they shrank back, giving her just enough time to regain her balance. The next thing I knew, she reached backwards and planted a heavy shove in my chest, sending me tumbling down the rocky cliff.  Searing pain shot through my burned hand, and everything went black.

When I came to, it took a long moment for me to remember where I was. An odd stillness had settled once more, but when I pushed myself up on limbs that felt like scrib jelly, my head swam sickeningly, and I very nearly fainted again.

“Take it easy, old man. You took quite a knock to your head.” Raziel’s voice floated over to me, and when I finally mustered enough strength to turn over, I found her sitting cross-legged opposite me with her back against a rock, just as she had been the night before – only now she was nursing a bloodied forearm, a crimson red stain slowly seeping through the strips of fabric she had ripped from her shirt to serve as makeshift bandages.   
  
“One of the bastards bit me,” she explained through gritted teeth. “And we’ve no healing potions. I used the last one to fix your head, since you bashed it open on your way down.” Instinctively I reached up, but all I found was a painful lump. “Sorry about that, by the way.”

 “We have to get you to a temple,” I decided, trying unsuccessfully to climb to my feet. The world span dizzyingly around me, and I fell onto my backside in the dust.

 “What’s the point? There’s no cure for Corprus.” I felt my heart drop into the pit of my stomach. Raziel busied herself with gathering up her pack. Avoiding my gaze, she held out a hand to help me to my feet, and once she was satisfied that I could at least walk on my own, she started to walk back up the rocky slope to where the Ghostfence stood, marking our route.  

“What are you going to do?” Raziel didn’t turn around, just gave a noncommittal shrug and trudged onward. Somehow the gesture seemed more helpless than any answer she could have given. “Well, maybe you’re not infected. Maybe…” I trailed off as her words came back to me –

  _“If you catch Corprus, I’ll kill you in a heartbeat. And I’d expect you to do the same for me._ _”_

 All I could do was shuffle along behind her and pray to every god I knew that it wouldn’t come to that.


	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter 15 - Excuses_

Dear reader,

I would like to take the opportunity to address you personally, whoever you may be. 

From what I have told you so far, you might think of me as a brave or determined man to have remained so committed to my journey, despite all the odds pitted against us. Raziel was only half correct when she assumed I was making the most of the time I have left in this world. The reality is far different. I am, in fact, a coward.

Until this journey, my usual response to life’s problems was to ignore them and hope they went away, or to remove myself as far as possible so that I would never have to confront them. I could do neither with my illness, so I suppose I did the next most logical thing – occupy my mind with something else, _anything_ else, so I did not have to think about it. 

Why I did not simply give up and return to Cyrodiil, I cannot honestly say I know. Perhaps I was just sick of running away. Perhaps I wanted to prove to myself that I was not a weak man after all. Maybe the reason behind my determination to finish my book is because I don’t want to just disappear, having made no mark upon the world – I want to leave something behind, so that I may be remembered.

Whatever the reason, the thought of giving up shamed me far more than relying so heavily on my guide to protect me. Shame is something else I cannot bear to face myself – yes, I am a weak, weak man. 

Now that I have told you this, perhaps you will not be so quick to judge me for what I am about to tell you. Or perhaps you will judge me anyway. I’m sure I deserve it. What happened next, I have never revealed to anyone until now. 

* * *

  _Chapter 16 - Reassurance_

It was mid-afternoon when Raziel collapsed – one minute she was in front of me, her head stiffly held high, as she refused to stop and rest even though she was growing short of breath. The next thing I knew her legs seemed to crumple beneath her, and she rolled down the sheer face of the foyada we were skirting along. She landed at the bottom in a crumpled, spluttering heap, and I slid down after her in dismay.

“Ugh,” she groaned as she sat up shakily, and spat out a mouthful of dust. Dirt and ash suck to her face, which was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. She was pale too – paler than I had seen any Dunmer before. “I’m fine,” she said when I offered her my hand. “I just need to rest.” 

“You _need_ treatment,” I said, nodding meaningfully towards her pack, where our Almsivi Intervention scrolls were kept.

“No. I’ve brought you this far, and I’m taking you the rest of the way.” She dragged herself over to a nearby boulder and fell back against it. She shut her eyes, and for a while I thought she had fallen asleep. I sat beside her, and not knowing what else to do, I wrote.

“I hope you find something nice to say about me in your book,” Raziel said suddenly. Startled, I turned to find her watching me with sharp eyes that I had grown so accustomed to.

“Of course. I’ve portrayed you as quite the hero.”

“ _Hah!_ I bet.” She fell quiet again, but this time she lay with her eyes open, staring at nothing in particular. “Don’t try to make me sound like a better person than I am,” she said after a while. 

“I was only joking.”

“I know. But I want to be remembered as I am, not as some kind of _saint_.” She said ‘saint’ in much the same way anyone else might refer to a brothel girl. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Raziel, it would take far more than a few well-chosen words to turn you into a saint.” I assured her. She seemed satisfied by this, and settled back down again, but again the pause did not last for long.

“You know, I never wanted to be an adventurer all my life. I planned on settling down somewhere as soon as I made my fortune. That was nine years ago.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Look at me now.”

“You’re young,” I told her, as reassuringly as I could, given the state she was in. “You have your whole life ahead of you,” I lied, “You don’t want to settle down yet.” Raziel fixed me with a disbelieving stare that would have looked more at home on the face of a sulky teenager than a battle-hardened warrior. I didn’t blame her. “Can you not go home?”

“Pah, even if I survived long enough to make the journey, I couldn’t go back. I… stole a lot of money from my family when I left. They sent the Morag Tong after me.”

“ _No_!” It was my turn to stare in disbelief. Raziel seemed to take pride in this, and the corners of her mouth turned up a little. She knew as well as I did that I wouldn’t be able to resist writing about the decidedly _un_ saintly escapades of her past. “But… you’re…”

“Still alive?” I nodded. “Not for much longer.” Raziel tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a sob. I pretended not to notice. “Oh yes. I was in Vivec when the assassins found me. I escaped through the sewers. They must have thought I drowned, because they never came looking for me again. That’s when I changed my name.”

“You’re not sorry.” I wasn’t asking – I already knew the answer.

“Of course not,” Raziel scoffed. “If there’s anything I’d have hated more than being an adventurer my whole life, it would be herding guar until I died. I don’t hold any regrets.” The finality of her words made us both pause. The seconds ticked by. I could almost see the life seeping out of her.

“I don’t want to die,” she whispered, and at that moment I would have given anything to have the courage to lean over and take her hand. I didn’t.

Soon Raziel fell asleep properly, and I continued with my writing, my back to her so I wouldn’t have to look at her face, its expression troubled even in sleep. My thoughts kept straying to the dream I’d had, the incessant wailing of the Infected echoing in my head. Would she also lose her mind, become a mad, wandering creature like those she had cut down? 

Through everything that had happened on this journey, she had been like a soldier, stoic, unrelenting. But I could not shake the memory of how she had turned on me in Assalkushalit out of my head – or the snarl of rage that had contorted her face that night.

The sun had passed its highest point and was sinking back down towards the horizon before Raziel woke again, but her strength had not returned. On the contrary, she barely managed to raise an arm in greeting, before letting it flop back into her lap.

“Don’t try to move,” I told her, pushing my concerns to the back of my mind. “I’ll put up the tent.”

“Wait, Edgar,” Raziel stopped me. “I need to ask a favour of you.”

“What is it?”

“I need you to promise me something. It’s important.” She paused to rub at her neck with a frown, and I glanced away hurriedly when I saw the blackening sores that had formed there. They were already spreading down her arms, and Raziel could only stare down at them, appalled. She shook her head helplessly, and was about to speak again when her hands suddenly balled into tight fists, and she fell back against her rock, a drawn-out wail of agony escaping between her clenched teeth. I hung back uselessly, too afraid to draw any closer as violent spasms wracked her body. They eventually subsided, leaving her sprawled in the dirt and gasping for breath. 

“Edgar,” she groaned, when she mustered the strength to talk again, “If I start to lose my mind, you have to promise to kill me.”

“What?” appalled, I took a shaky step backwards. “I can’t – “

“Promise me!” Raziel growled, in a voice I had never heard from her before. It sounded like the voice of an animal.  


“I…” I swallowed the lump that had risen in my throat. “I promise.”

* * *

  _Chapter 17 - Shame_

Raziel’s spasms of pain didn’t stop. If anything, they grew worse, and all I could do was hover helplessly nearby while she writhed in agony. Sometimes she would fall still for a moment, and once, when she regained her voice, she was surprisingly lucid. My hopes were dashed a while later, when she started to babble breathlessly about Red Mountain, in a voice like dry parchment, although her own voice came through in snatches as she fought the disease inside her.

“Raziel, can you hear me?” I began, though I was cut off by a long, low groan from deep in her throat as she clutched her sweat-streaked, sore-marked forehead. “Raziel!”

“Edgar…” she choked out, and I knelt down beside her, although I was careful not to touch her.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m here,” I murmured, in my best interpretation of how someone would comfort a sick child, despite my inexperience in that particular field. I don’t think she even noticed.

“Edgar, I don’t want to turn into one of them,” she was saying. The growing panic in her expression warned me of what was coming. I couldn’t meet her gaze, so instead I stared at her dust-coated dagger, which lay in the dirt beside me. Raziel had thrown it there in a short burst of clear-headedness, and ordered me to use that, and only that, if I had to kill her. 

_‘Go for the throat_ ,’ she had ordered me, as if she were telling me how to bring down a kwama beast. _‘From behind, that’s the best way to avoid getting bitten.’_

“Kill me, please,” she begged, fresh tears forming streaks in the dust on her face. I couldn’t move. It was all I could do to shake my head.

“I can’t,” I told her, though her expression hit me like a kick in the gut.

“No… no!” she wailed, like a child. “You… you said you would! You _promised_!” her body stiffened again as another wave of pain hit her. I nearly reached out to her, but a vicious swipe from her arm made me reel backwards instead. She clutched the hand to her chest, as if holding it there would help her regain control of her body. I took another step back – her dagger lay within her reach now, and if I tried to pick it up she might have attacked me again.

But we both knew that wasn’t the reason I couldn’t bring myself to fulfil my promise.

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” I tried to tell her, but the words were drowned out by a single, drawn out groan, more beast than person, which rose to a scream that echoed down the foyada.

“DAMN IT ALL, JUST KILL ME!”

I turned and ran.

* * *

  _Chapter 18 – Journey’s end_

Of the next day I cannot remember much, except that I did not stop running. I rested in a rocky crevasse that night, though I doubt I caught even a minute’s sleep. In the morning I found I had lost my bearings, and at one point I nearly cost myself a day’s travel when I set off back in the direction I had come. Only my wavering self-doubt caused me to change my mind.

I spent the remainder of that last day hiding amongst rocks from starving cliff racers and feeling my way along the side of the foyada when the sun’s glare became too strong to see through. The sun beat down mercilessly on my bare head and neck. It wasn’t long before my mind was touched by the heat, and by the time the dull shape of Ghostgate finally came into view, I was turning back every five or six steps, imagining I could hear Raziel’s stumbling footsteps crunching in the ashy soil behind me.

I was met by a pair of guards in bonemold armour who had seen me staggering along the foyada from their watchtower. I never reached the gate on my own feet – I collapsed mere feet away in the dirt.

They kept me in the temple at Ghostgate for several weeks for observation, even after I had recovered from the heatstroke and dehydration. When they were satisfied that I was not carrying the blight disease – or worse – they gave me a salve to prevent infection in my burned hand and sent me on my way. They didn’t ask about what had become of my guide. They didn’t speak much to me at all.

There was no search party for Raziel, nor was there a funeral. There was no way to tell if she was alive or dead – or whether her existence could even be called ‘life’ any more. Either way, everything that had ever been Raziel – that stubborn, impulsive, unpredictable Dunmer whose single greatest fear was that I might portray her as a hero – was gone.

I didn’t pay much attention to my journey back to Cyrodiil – I simply sat by myself most of the time, trying to order my thoughts enough to write them down. I don’t think I wrote even a single word until I arrived back at the Arcane University. Only when I had locked myself safely in my room did I allow myself to mourn Raziel’s fate. I allowed myself to shed tears for her, knowing no-one else would, tears of anger, grief and regret.

I finish this book now on my deathbed by aide of a scribe, in the long hours I have to myself between the visits from the healers, who feel it is their duty to come even though there is nothing more they can do for me. I’ve lost the use of all of my limbs, and even talking becomes difficult after a while. I have no family or friends to spend my final days with. Even my old colleagues stay away, for fear I might be carrying the blight disease, even after all this time. If they had seen what I had, perhaps the blight would be the least of their worries. 

Only my scribe stays by my side, night and day. The endless scratching of his quill stays with me when I drop off into sleep, though when I dream it becomes the throb of the Ghostfence, or the creak of Dwemer ruins, or the cries of distant cliff racers.

I will die soon, but I will not die alone.

_The End_

* * *

_Postscript by Antoni Mussillius, scribe_

I heard about Edgar Louis’ adventure by word-of-mouth, though my original source had been told the man died before he could finish his book. I was visiting the Arcane University with another client when I learned this was not so; he was very much alive, though bed-ridden and growing weaker by the day. My curiosity getting the better of me, I went to see him, despite the other scholars’ advice to stay away, and asked if I could read his story. Despite being only half-finished, on account of his hands slowly becoming stiff and swollen, what I read had me hooked. I decided I had to help this Edgar finish his book.

Unfortunately my current client was in the middle of an extremely important thesis, so for the next month and a half my time was spent travelling across Cyrodiil, though I promised Edgar that I would return as soon as I could.

When I next saw him, I barely recognized him. He seemed to have aged ten years, and though the healers were doing everything they could to make him comfortable, I could tell he was in pain. His work had not progressed much further.

“My hands,” he said sadly, when I asked him about it. “I just can’t write anymore.” He held them up for me to see; one was smooth and the other puckered with scar tissue from his accident in Bthanchend, but they had all but withered in on themselves. He couldn’t so much as stretch his fingers. We both knew he did not have much time left. I set to work right away.

It took weeks for Edgar to recount his story, for as he grew weaker our sessions together grew shorter and less frequent. During that time, not a single visitor came to see him, apart from the healers. I wanted to ask him if there were any relatives – no matter how distant – that he wanted to see before he died, but I didn’t. I already knew the answer.

By the time we had completed the last chapter I knew he barely had a week left, so instead of heading off to edit and publish our manuscript, I stayed by Edgar Louis’ side. We spoke not a word of the book, even when the time came to say goodbye.

I had thought that getting the manuscript written down in time would be the hardest part about getting Edgar’s story published, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. In fact, it was at least a year after I had completed my editing that I finally held a copy of the finished book in my hands, and even then, it was one of a shamefully small number.

There were few people who believed the story was true, and even fewer who were willing to publish something that carried even the smallest criticism of the Empire’s presence in Morrowind. I received letters telling me as much, but I refused to censor Edgar’s sole mark upon the world when I was so close to achieving his dream.

To my regret, I may well have reconsidered my stance if I had not met the eldest of the Gabrinna brothers, entirely by chance, while on a job for another client. A struggling company with nothing to lose, Eight Brothers Publishing of the Imperial City agreed to help me, although with their limited resources only a very small number of copies were ever made. However, words cannot describe my pride at having finally brought Edgar’s – and Raziel’s – story a part of Cyrodiilic history.

* * *

  _Publisher’s note_ _  
_

All views and opinions contained within this book belong to their respective individuals and do not necessarily represent the views of Eight Brothers Publishing. Eight Brothers Publishing is not liable for any legal or social repercussions of owning or distributing this work. The members of Eight Brothers Publishing support the freedom of thought and expression, and are proud to call themselves citizens of the Empire. Long live Emperor Uriel Septim VII.

  



End file.
